To Ease the Passing of Time

I’m walking alone on a narrow trail in the middle of a windy and rainy night, and I can hear the ocean roaring at the bottom of the cliff on the left-hand side of the trail.

I’m carefully holding in the palm of my hands a small candle that I try to protect the best I can against the wind and the rain.

The flame is weak and trembling, and I can feel the dripping wax burning my hands, but I hold on to it in spite of the pain because it’s the only thing that I have to help me see where I’m going, and to keep my hands warm.

Sometimes the flame almost disappears, and it makes me scared that maybe it’s gone forever, and will never come back, but again and again it comes back to life.

I don’t know what I’m doing on this trail, and who put me there.  I don’t know what’s at the end of it; I don’t even know if there’s an end to it.

I keep walking, and all of a sudden it stops raining, and the wind dies down, and it gets a little warmer and brighter, and I think that I no longer need to carry my candle, but I decide to keep the flame alive just in case.

And then it becomes rainy and windy again, and I’m glad that I still have my candle with me because I know that I’m really going to need it.

That’s when I wake up in my bed in the middle of the night. I know that I was dreaming, and it’s clear to me what my dream was all about. The narrow trail is my life, and that small candle is my faith. I just hope that wherever that trail takes me, my candle will last until I get to the end of it.